In addition, there was a front-page story in the evening journals, telling of the discovery of a small broadcasting station near the end of Long Island. The man who owned it could not be found.
It was from his station, investigators believed, that spurious messages had been sent shortly before midnight, purporting to be the desperate distress signals of a sinking ship. Liners had stopped in response.
The station was unlicensed, but people living near the lonely spot recalled that a man had been seen there during the past six months. No clue could be obtained to the stranger's identity.
But the greatest story of all — the one that was most amazing to Clyde Burke — was the extension granted to the convicted men, Sforza and Pecherkin!
The governor, the story went, had been aroused at one o'clock in the morning. A messenger had brought him an important document.
The governor would not reveal its contents. He stated simply that the case of Sforza and Pecherkin would be reopened. He had ordered their commutation from the electric chair after they had already been placed in death cells at Sing Sing.
New police investigations were under way. It was said, on good authority, that the convicted men would be cleared.
Another was responsible for the crimes attributed to them. Detectives were following mysterious clues that had come from unknown sources.
It was all a mystery to Clyde Burke as he sat in his little office. As he pushed the clippings, one by one, to the side of his desk, they went away from the light of his desk lamp and over each long column of type fell a shadow.
Clyde Burke noticed it as he completed his work.
There was something mysterious in the simple occurrence. It seemed as though the hand of The Shadow had stretched forth to claim the glory that belonged to him.